this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2024
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Or it's because of nitrogen fertilizers and the scientific method vastly improving productivity.
One of the two.
Nitrogen fertilizers don't date to the early 17th century, when this trend of explosive economic growth becomes apparent in early capitalist states, unless you're counting four-field rotation farming, itself only adopted because of the market-driven demands of early capitalist societies.
I tend to draw a distinction between mercantilism and capitalism, and I think you're brushing over the economic rape of half the world for that explosion of Colonial European wealth, but it's certainly true that the line can get blurry when you're discussing the exact difference between a noble offering an early chemist patronage and a capitalist paying an employee to come up with ideas he can exploit while paying them a fraction of its value.